I can't believe that the big day has arrived! Molly Mormon, the girl who's been bugging you all to finish YOUR Personal Progress has done it herself! Sure, me earning the medallion probably doesn't affect you too much, but here are some tips to help you earn yours.
1. Use the resources on this blog!
When I joined the Young Women's program, this blog didn't exist. I searched for free Personal Progress resources all over the Web... only to find out that they really didn't exist. The ones that did were done on Microsoft Word, and I wanted to create some resources that were visually pleasing, simple, and functional! Once I started really designing things, I was able to do so! I worked hard to create all of the many amazing resources on this blog, so... please use them! It's what they are there for. If you're just getting started, print yourself the PP Binder. It's all of the PP Resources of the blog, bundled into one great free package. If you can't afford to print so many items, try going digital! Thanks to my PDF format and a cool tool called Kami, you can still complete Personal Progress online if that's your thing. If you've already started, don't worry. Update your progress on the Personal Progress tracker, and then go to the homepage and print out all the value experiences you need. You still can use the PP Binder if you want, especially if you're under halfway done with the program. Bottom line: I started the program by myself, but using my own resources really helped me to prioritize, get organized, and reach the finish line.
2. Goal set, goal set, goal set!
You might have figured out that I love goal-setting. I've made many resources for doing this, and I'm a firm believer in a)goal setting for big chunks of time and b) always working on something! In the regular program, even now where you have a tricky, tricky time limit, you should always be working on a two week experience. They are tricky (I actually made the mistake of doing ALL of the one-day ones, and then the hard ones) but especially by doing similar experiences at once, you can totally knock them out. Sit down, and figure out how many items you have left. Let's say you are halfway done -- 28 more items in 16 months. You can decide to relax and finish in December - 2 items per month, with 2 extra in summer, or work and finish it before the deadline - 28 items in 7 months, with 4 items per month. Generally, the rule is to divide your items to complete by the time you have left in months, and put the remainder of experiences on your schedule to do in the summer. Right now, it's fall, so be sure to print out a copy of Fall Goal Setting!
3. Personalize Personal Progress to you.
One year we had a New Beginnings based on the movie "Up." In it a video was shared where Carl Frederickson (the old man) looks through his scrapbook of adventures he never got to go on with his wife. Then he goes to the end, and realizes that they had been going on adventures all along. You may not see it, but often you're doing Personal Progress in your life without knowing it. One example: in a writing elective I took one year, we were assigned to write a 40-page autobiography. Everyone moaned and groaned, but as you might be able to tell I like writing and rambling on, and I was sure I would be able to make the limit, no problem. I wrote about the first 2 years of my life in... 60 pages! People would ask, "How do you do that? How do you have the time?" Unfortunately, I had to make the time. As I was writing that autobiography, I would work on it the whole time in that writing period, and then spend 1-2 hours on it at home. Every day! If I missed a singled day, I would fall way behind. While I was grateful for the good grades I was getting for it so for, I was sort of overwhelmed. It was a huge undertaking. I was spending three hours on it each day for around three weeks! Then something clicked. Not only did I spend over ten hours on it, I was writing about myself, my life story, and developing my... Individual Worth! When I handed in the 225 page autobiography, it felt so good knowing I had earned an A+ and completed a value project! Have you ever been in any situations like this? The things you do for NHS, the school play, soccer choir, getting a driver's liscense... those can be value projects! I strongly advise you to really personalize your value projects to things you need to improve on, you want to work on, you would actually have fun working on. This blog was my C&A project, and while it was hard work, I had fun creating it and learning about design! My Good Works project was keeping the YW bulletin board updated. That was fun. The point is, your church life and school life don't have to be different. Personal Progress helps you integrate them.
4. Start young.
As I look back at myself in earlier years, and at my Personal Progress book, I noticed two things. First, when I was just a wee twelve-year-old, I didn't really have much of a life. Second, I had completed so many things back then! While you may not necessarily have a choice about starting young due to the new deadline, if you do, try and finish when you're 14 or 16! Of course, Personal Progress is designed to let you work at your pace, so do that by all means, but don't save all of your work for your last year in Young Womens! As you go into each new grade, you'll probably get more homework, have more studying to do, join more clubs, and just be busier in general. You'll look back in your book, see what you knocked out your first year of YW and be so grateful. Another piece of advice which is kind of similar to this is to utilize summer! I don't know if your summers consist of camps, travel, or NOTHING, but if you're sad that the answer is NOTHING, use that time to do Personal Progress! Who knows, maybe your leaders have a little Summer Personal Progress program going on? I feel like these two points are similar: you get busier as you go back in the school year and as you get older, so utilize summer and your younger years.
I'm sure there's so much more to say, but overall, I just want to wish you the very best of luck as you complete this program! You can do it, by following the tips above, and if you have any other big bullets to add, let me know in the comments below.
While I know I am going in a new direction with my new blog and shop and all, I'm still here to help!
Yours Truly,
Latter-Day Lucie / Molly Mormon
No comments:
Post a Comment